“But even one supper for so many men…it will beggar us! Winter will be here soon; we can’t afford it.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed. I tried to make my friend feel confident, braced. But I couldn’t even convince myself to muster up a spot of optimism. I was weary to the core, and frightened. “We have little choice, Anthousa. We either offer these men a stew pot and a few dozen loaves of bread, or they will offer us the tips of their spears.”
Sunset came early that night. Summer had fled; the final weeks of our dismal harvest lay before us. Together with my women, I stoked the fires below our largest clay cook pots and fanned the coals in the brick ovens to a livid red glow. We chopped and mixed, kneaded and stirred in tense silence while the Ithacan men lounged around a great bonfire, heedlessly burning up our precious stores of wood without a care for the winter to come.
Galene remembered several large barrels of old wine she had stored in a cave along the promontory trail. She had traded for the barrels more than a year before; as it was not of good quality for drinking, Galene had intended to let it sour into vinegar, which was always useful for pickling plums and cherries, olives and onions and the eggs of the little partridge-like birds that ran about the undergrowth of our forest. We had looked forward to those tasty preserves, but all agreed that we were willing to sacrifice those delicacies if it meant keeping our crowd of dangerous guests in good spirits. Eumelia helped Galene roll the barrels down to the clearing, and soon the men were helping themselves to the wine. If it was poor and nearly spoiled, the Ithacans did not seem to care.
Thanks to the wine haze, which took hold of the men more firmly with each passing hour, we managed to deceive them with our cooking, thereby saving more of our food cache for our own use. We mixed ashes liberally with the flour, disguising the taste with wild onion and mustard seed, then soaked the loaves in stew drippings to soften the gritty texture. Even with those additions, the bread looked muddy and barely held together. But the Ithacans ate the bread so readily that we were hard pressed to keep up with their appetites. Either they were too drunk to notice how poorly we baked, or it had been so long since they’d seen a proper loaf that they had forgotten how bread ought to look and taste. We dished up a thin stew, made from the stringy meat of gulls, which Anthousa’s falcons had caught. The gull meat had been dried long ago; we soaked it in wine and marinated it with tenderizing herbs, but even after vigorous boiling it was still tough as a boot’s sole. The men never cared. They ate that wretched brew of gull, wild onion, and acorn with as much relish as if we had set before them fine fowls roasted in their plumage.
Hour by hour, my friends and I toiled over the cook-fires. We salted the meal with the sweat of our brows, hardly pausing to catch our breath or wet our throats with a sip of water. There was always more bread to pull from the oven, more onions to add to the ever-thinning broth, more dried fruits to forfeit to the bottomless hunger of the Ithacans. And always, the twilight echoed shouts for more wine, more bread, more food.
Galene’s wine proved stronger than I had initially credited. By the time full night came, unfurling a banner of stars across our patch of sky, the men had taken to singing and dancing around the bonfire. I knelt beside the oven, my whole body protesting the never-ending work, and watched the Ithacans circling those tall, leaping flames. A few still lingered at the makeshift tables and benches we had created by laying half-rotted planks across upturned pots and barrels.
“I don’t like it,” Demetria muttered, stooping to push another ashy loaf into the coals. “They’re too drunk.”
I nodded. “They worry me, too. It has been years since any of us have seen a drunken man. I believe we’ve forgotten how to deal with them. Now here we find ourselves, with twenty-three drunkards stampeding around our clearing.”
“It’s too much.”
I groaned as I climbed to my feet. “Are you and the others all right?”
Demetria took my meaning. “They aren’t so aggressive. Not yet, at any rate. They try to grope our breasts and our backsides when we go out to the tables, to bring more food, but we’re quick enough to dodge them. They’re still more interested in the food than in our bodies.”
How long will that hold? I wondered. “It has been seven years since I’ve seen a man in his cups, but from what I recall, they should get sleepy soon.”
“With any luck,” Demetria said, “they’ll fall asleep around the fire. It’s warm enough that it ought to lull them; they’ve burned up most of the firewood we gathered for the autumn and winter.”
“Soon they’ll sleep, and in the morning, they’ll leave. As early as possible, I hope.”
“With the dawn’s first light.”
Then, I told myself with the fervent expectancy of a prayer, we could turn to the business of restoring order to our island, and planning how we might replace our depleted stores.
Grasping the bronze handle with thick wool pads, Eumelia lifted a pot of stew from the fire tripod. She sighed heavily as she eased it to the ground, then braced her hands in the small of her back, stretching.
“Let me serve it,” I said. “You look worn out, Eumelia.”
“I am, but so are the lot of us.”
“Have you had water?”
She thought for a moment. “Not for an hour, at least.”
“Then you should drink.” I took the wool pads. “I will take the stew out to the men.”
“Drink,” Eumelia muttered. “I’d drink some of that blasted wine if those Ithacan dogs had left any. It might ease my headache.”
“Seems more likely to make your headache worse.” Anthousa dumped a handful of ashes into a bowl of flour. “If you’re going out among the beasts, Circe, it’s best to take a weapon.” She found my spinning distaff—I had left it leaning against the brick oven—and tossed it to me. I surprised myself by catching it deftly. Perhaps I was not as tired as I’d thought. The gods would give me enough strength to make it through this night.
Distaff tucked under my arm, I lugged the heavy pot of stew out among the men. Straight away, I understood Anthousa’s warning. Hands reached clumsily out of the firelight, seeking to grasp my work-stained chiton, my arms and hair, seeking to fondle my breasts and waist. So long as I kept up a brisk pace, I seemed to be in little danger. The men were in a festival mood, hooting and laughing, howling out their drunken songs. In their bleary eyes, I was a decoration, a pretty little symbol of their celebration, like the horns-of-plenty that adorned the tables at Colchian harvest feasts. They had no serious intent to molest me, nor to impede my work. Even so, I was glad of my sturdy staff; it would prove handy, should any man feel rather too festive.